Chapter 228: Help! Help! (3)
"You go on ahead. I heard this haunted house uses a fear grading system. It's rare to get into the highest difficulty scenario, so I want to look around a bit more." Ye Xiaoxin stood in the director's office, not leaving.
The noise from the tape recorder grew louder, and within the static, other sounds faintly emerged.
It sounded like someone gasping, or maybe crying.
Han Qiuming checked the time—just over two minutes left. He didn't insist. "Alright, take care of yourself."
With that, he picked up the tape recorder and ran out alone.
Watching Han Qiuming's hurried retreating figure, Ye Xiaoxin's usual calm was shattered. Her beautiful eyes slowly widened.
"How does it look like there's someone crawling on his back?"
She was a staunch atheist, and precisely because of that, she could recklessly enter any haunted house to do reviews, firmly believing it was all fake.
But just now, she had seen something her past experience couldn't explain at all.
"Who's that person lying on his back? That should be a person, right?"
...
Han Qiuming sprinted at full speed with the tape recorder. "Two minutes left!"
His body grew colder and colder. Han Qiuming didn't know where the problem was. The chill emanated from his back, seeped into his body, and drilled toward his heart.
"It hurts..."
A voice came from beside his ear, faint and indistinct, like a woman whispering over his shoulder.
"Who's there!" Han Qiuming jerked his head around to look behind him. His shoulder was empty—nothing there.
"Did I mishear?"
He sped up. Now, only one thought occupied his mind: get out of here as fast as possible.
"I've got the item. Once I'm out, I win. I can reclaim the face Tian Teng Hospital lost!"
Han Qiuming threw caution to the wind, accelerating and running forward like a madman.
"It hurts so much..."
The voice drew closer, moving from his shoulder to his ear, as if trying to burrow into his ear canal.
"It hurts so much!"
"Ah!" Han Qiuming swung his arms wildly at the air. "Come out! What are you?!"
No one responded. In the pitch-black corridor, only his own echo and the rustling static remained.
"Is this tape recorder messing with me?" Besides himself, the only thing that could make sound was the recorder. He lifted it to eye level. The tape was spinning, and the indicator light had somehow changed from green to red.
"Is it this?"
Han Qiuming racked his brain but couldn't figure out the principle. Time was running out. Gritting his teeth, he picked up the recorder and kept running.
"The recorder is definitely problematic, but it's also the key to clearing the level! I finally found it—how could I just toss it away? That would waste all the hard work I've put in!"
In his mind, Han Qiuming cursed Chen Ge up and down. "Shameless! So despicable!"
Now, all he had to do was run out with the recorder to clear the level, but that was the most agonizing part. He couldn't bear to throw it away, yet keeping it meant facing the terror it brought.
There was no way out. For an ordinary person, this was nearly an unsolvable scenario!
"I'll go all out!" Han Qiuming clenched his teeth. To clear Chen Ge's haunted house, he was truly risking his life.
He ran wildly. His shoulders grew heavier, and something seemed to press down on his back, a bone-chilling cold seeping in.
"It hurts so much..."
The voice behind him gradually became clearer, shifting from a vague male tone to a female one.
It sounded mature, carrying a hint of helplessness and despair.
"Wait a second!"
When that voice rang out, Han Qiuming's hair stood on end. "I've heard that voice somewhere before?"
He was almost stunned. In a haunted house he had no connection to, under such a crisis, he heard a voice that was incredibly familiar.
"Where did I hear it?"
Cold sweat slid down his forehead. He had very few female friends, and none fit that age range.
"No, I must have heard it somewhere."
Memories surfaced from the depths of his mind. Han Qiuming suddenly recalled a night about half a year ago.
He was revising the design plan for Tian Teng Hospital. To boost the haunted house's appeal, he ignored others' objections and resolutely incorporated the bizarre deaths of Xu Zhenzhen and her father as a gimmick into the haunted house's creation.
To craft a subplot and make the ghost of Xu Zhenzhen seem more real, he researched a lot of information about her.
This woman had once worked at her father's hospital but was later fired due to a doctor-patient dispute. At the time, the patient's family made a huge scene, and videos even leaked online.
The patient's family stormed the hospital, accusing Xu Zhenzhen. Wearing a white coat, she was surrounded by other doctors and nurses.
She tried to defend herself softly, but no one listened. Later, the situation spiraled out of control. She was pushed to the ground, and someone stepped on her finger.
"It hurts so much..."
"Yes! That's the voice!"
Han Qiuming's scalp nearly exploded. He had heard the voice of a dead person in a haunted house!
He threw the tape recorder to the ground. Even if he had ten times the courage, he wouldn't dare go near it again.
"Why did Xu Zhenzhen's voice end up in the recorder? Did that bastard Chen make it? Impossible! He had no idea we were coming to the Third Ward at first. It was only because of my suggestion that he switched scenarios on the fly." Han Qiuming wanted to slap himself hard. "I really have a big mouth!"
"The recorder was originally from Tian Teng Hospital. Did the Xu Zhenzhen I made up turn into a real ghost?" His body temperature dropped, his skin felt cold, and his shoulders grew heavier. "I need to get out first. This place is too creepy, too damn creepy."
Han Qiuming ran forward, but after just a few steps, he was panting from exhaustion. The soft bedding made it hard to get traction, and his body felt heavier and heavier.
"What's going on? It's like I'm carrying something?" He glanced back. The recorder lay against the wall, unharmed because it had landed on the bedding, still working.
The tape spun inside the recorder, like a sinister smile or a vortex that would suck you in if you stared too long.
"I have to escape."
The recorder was far away, but the rustling static still echoed in his ears.
"It hurts, it hurts so much..."
The woman's voice tormented Han Qiuming's mind. His face twisted in rage. "Shut up! I said shut up!"
He punched the air, spinning in place, trying to find where the sound was coming from. He felt like there was a woman's face on his back, speaking.
"Get lost!"
He pulled out his phone, turned on the flashlight, and aimed it behind him, opening the camera. As he rotated the lens, a familiar face—one he had seen countless times in newspapers and hospital files—appeared.
"Xu, Xu Zhenzhen!"
The phone dropped. Han Qiuming ran for his life toward the end of the corridor. His body grew colder, and the voice clung to him like a shadow.
"It hurts, it hurts, it hurts so much!"
Turning a corner, Han Qiuming returned to where the mannequins had fallen. He didn't notice any changes in them, charging forward like a madman.
But somehow, even though he watched his step, his calf caught on something, and he crashed heavily into a pile of mannequins. His high-prescription glasses flew off!
"My glasses!"
Han Qiuming lay on the ground, everything blurry around him. Hands, feet, and heads were everywhere.
He crawled toward where his glasses had fallen, but they moved among the mannequins, drifting farther away.
Worse still, in the blur and darkness, countless heads and broken limbs closed in on him.
"What is this?! Stay back! Help! Help!"
Happy Mid-Autumn Festival, everyone~ Thanks to the chapter comment big shot "Here the name can be twelve characters" for the alliance leader! Thanks to Xinyun Qianyin for the alliance leader!
Owed four chapters on the 21st, made up one each on the 22nd and 24th, so still owe two. With two new alliance leaders, that means I owe four chapters now! I definitely won't forget!